Pauline J. Yao is Lead Curator, Visual Art, at M+. Since joining M+ in 2012, Yao has played a principal role in building the museum’s visual art collection through acquisitions of works from around Asia and beyond. Her previous exhibitions include In Search of Southeast Asia through the M+ Collections (with Shirley Surya, 2018) and Five Artists: Sites Encountered (2019), both presented at the M+ Pavilion. For the 2021 inaugural M+ Opening Programmes, she organized Antony Gormley: Asian Field and lead the curatorial team for Individuals, Networks, Expressions. Yao is a regular contributor to Artforum International and her writings on contemporary Asian art have appeared in numerous catalogues, online publications, and edited volumes.

Noit Banai is an art historian and critic, who specializes in modern and contemporary art with a focus on conditions of migrations, exile, diaspora, border-regimes, and statelessness. Before joining Hong Kong Baptist University as associate professor, she was professor of contemporary art in the Department of Art History at the University of Vienna, and lecturer of modern and contemporary art at the School of the Museum of Fine Arts at Tufts University, Boston.

She is the author of Yves Klein (2014), Being a Border (2021), and articles that have appeared in journals such as Third Text, Stedelijk Studies, Public Culture, Performing Arts Journal, and Texte zur Kunst. She served as assistant editor for the journal Res: Anthropology and Aesthetics and is a regular contributor to Artforum International.